Team Free Will Investigates Easter
by HCAddict
Summary: Dean finds a mysterious basket filled with sweets. He, Sam and Cas investigate.


Just a bit of silliness...

xxxx

"Did you leave this here?" Dean called out to his brother loudly, spying the large blue basket sitting on the table next to the Sunday newspaper, "Since when do you buy Easter treats? Sam?"

Silence met Dean's ears and he shrugged, thinking his brother was probably buried in a pile of books somewhere. It was unusual for Sam to go on a junk food binge, even for Dean's sake, but he wasn't going to turn down free candy. He took out the box with the large chocolate bunny, thinking it would be a good treat for later, and scooped his hand through the assorted pieces of chocolate, grabbing a handful at random. Plain chocolate, crispy chocolate, chocolate with peanut butter filling...it was all good. He wasn't too particular about his candy, he loved all forms equally.

He sat down, a small pile of candy in front of him, and pulled out his phone. Even though it was the weekend, a holiday weekend, there was nothing stopping him from checking to see if there was anything weird going on nearby. They didn't usually celebrate holidays, despite Sam's apparent need for Easter treats this year, and monsters didn't typically care if it was a Holy day when they went on a killing spree. He pulled up a news site, scrolling through stories as his candy pile slowly turned into a foil wrapper graveyard. There was nothing attention-grabbing in the news, and Sam still hadn't surfaced, which meant that Dean was getting bored rather quickly.

He reached out and pulled the candy basket closer, pulling out a plastic egg and cracking it open. Jelly beans. He loved jelly beans; they were his favorite type of beans. He tilted the plastic egg back, depositing the assortment of sugary candies into his mouth, then left the egg on the table and stood. He had to find something to do other than eat candy all day, though that didn't sound like a terrible plan at all.

He was about to head downstairs to the shooting range when the echo of the door opening met his ears and he looked up to see Sam and Cas walking in together, talking in hushed voices that indicated that they must be discussing the Mark. Dean may not have gone to college, but he wasn't stupid by any means; he knew his brother was still researching and trying to find a cure, even if he wouldn't admit it outright. Both his brother and their angel looked surprised to see him when they reached the bottom of the staircase, and he asked, "Where have you been?"

"Getting lunch." Sam replied, holding up a bag of takeout from one of the local quick-service restaurants, "Bacon cheeseburger, onion rings and a mini apple pie."

"Oh, yes." Dean moaned happily, moving closer and snatching the bag from his brother before Sam could even take another step into the room, "You are the best brother in the world."

Sam chuckled, rolling his eyes in Cas's direction, then put a second bag down on the table. Dean couldn't see through the brown paper, but he could assume that it was a salad or something of that nature, and therefore he had no interest in it whatsoever. Food was supposed to taste good and leave you feeling peaceful and satisfied. When he ate a salad, he felt like he wanted to break someone's neck for giving it to him in the first place.

"What's this?" Castiel asked, motioning to the basket on the table. He studied it for a moment, eyeing the contents with a puzzled expression, "Little tiny candy ovals?"

"Easter candy." Dean supplied, "Mostly chocolate...traditional for this holiday?"

"What does chocolate have to do with Easter? Humans typically celebrate Easter as the day when-"

"Save the bible stories for Sunday School, Cas." Dean interrupted, "It's not for the religious part of the holiday, it is to make little kids happy. The Easter Bunny brings good kids baskets of candy and other trinkets on Easter morning. Kids go crazy on a sugar high. It's like Halloween, without the costumes and with a bit more surprise."

Castiel continued to look puzzled, but accepted the chocolate coin that Dean handed him and unwrapped it slowly, as if not really sure he wanted to try it. He had sampled candy once or twice while in human form, and he didn't remember it being bad, but things tasted different now that he had grace again.

"Where did you get the candy, Dean?" Sam asked, eyeing the large assortment of Type-2 Diabetes with a mixture of curiosity and disdain, "You went a little overboard, don't you think?"

Dean looked up from his burger mid-bite with a bewildered look on his face, "Me? It was here when I got up this morning. I thought you left it here."

"I didn't leave it here." Sam eyed the wrappers on the table with a heavy sense of dread forming in his gut, "Tell me you didn't eat candy that randomly appeared on our table. Tell me that you didn't see this and think it was time for an all-you-can-eat buffet of sugar."

"Of course I did! I thought _you_ left the candy there, how was I supposed to know it may be dangerous?" Dean asked, pushing the basket further away as if that would somehow keep him safe even though he had already ingested close to twenty pieces of candy, "It tasted fine."

Sam rolled his eyes, giving Dean a classic bitchface and retorting sarcastically, "Oh, well if it tasted fine, it must be fine. Maybe the Easter Bunny came during the night and decided we were worthy of twenty pounds of chocolate. That makes total sense. It could be poisoned! Do you know how many people out there would love to see us dead? Dad may have been very hands-off in his parenting, but I'm pretty sure it was him who taught us not to accept candy from strangers!"

"I didn't know it just appeared there!" Dean defended himself, "It's not like there was a note that said 'Have Some Candy. Love, The Candyman.' There was no reason not to think that you didn't decide to pick up some candy while you were out."

"Perhaps instead of assigning blame, we should try to ascertain the source?" Castiel suggested, already growing weary of the bickering between the brothers, "If we can determined where the candy originated from, we can decide if the candy is dangerous or not."

Dean looked down at his half-eaten burger and the full carton of onion rings with a mournful expression; they just wouldn't taste the same later and he knew his geeky brother well enough to know that research was more of a priority than lunch when working a potential case. He took as big of a bite as he could manage, then set the burger back down on his wrapper, standing and tilting his head towards the library in a silent question.

Sam walked closer to the table, lifting the basket and telling his brother, "No, finish your lunch. I want to check this out first, anyway." He lifted it over his head, checking for markings or words on the bottom, and then sifted through the contents carefully to see if there were any clues. Not finding anything in the basket itself, he reached over and scooped up Dean's discarded wrappers and inspected them as well. Nothing about this seemed sinister or malicious, but it wasn't often that _good_ things randomly turned up out of the blue. And now knowing that Rowena was after them, especially since she was a witch, it was too much of a coincidence to ignore.

"Can you tell by touching it if an angel or demon tampered with it?" Dean asked Cas in between onion rings, "Using your mojo or whatever?"

Cas picked up the basket, studying it carefully, but after a few minutes he put it down and shook his head, "I'm not really getting anything from it. Has anyone been here? Any signs that someone was trying to break through the protective wards surrounding this place?"

"No, nothing out of the ordinary." Sam replied distractedly, trying to put together the pieces of this puzzle in his mind. He enjoyed the harder cases, the ones that required him to use deduction skills and think outside the box. Not only were they refreshing after dealing with a lot of the same things over and over again, but he liked the way it felt when he got to give his brain a bit of exercise. It was one of the few things he missed about being in school. He opened an egg, eyeing the jelly beans, and asked Dean, "You ate unwrapped candy? Seriously?"

"I didn't know it was suspicious!" Dean protested, finishing his meal and pushing his chair back, "So what do you think this could be? I've never heard of anything breaking in to leave presents behind."

"At least _good_ presents." Sam replied, thinking about the times they've dealt with monsters who have left ominous, dangerous or lethal items behind for their victims. "A witch, maybe?"

Cas ran his hand along the spines of the books lining the shelf, stopping on one about theology, "Perhaps this isn't about the presents? Is it a coincidence that this happened on what is considered by most humans to be a religious holiday? Perhaps we should start with things related to heavenly beings?"

"But then it wouldn't be an easter basket, it would be biblical." Dean dismissed, "Easter traditions are only loosely rooted in religion, most of it is commercialism. Maybe we should be looking for a Wal-Mart Demon."

"A Wal-Mart Demon?" Cas asked, blinking several times as he processed the thought in his mind, and then added, "I don't believe that Wal-Mart-"

"It was a joke, Cas." Sam interrupted, "A bad joke, but still a joke. I'm going to make some calls and see what I can find out, you two hit the books."

"Or I can make calls and _you_ can hit the books." Dean replied, the idea of spending hours flipping through their library sounding worse than whatever repercussions he could imagine coming from the mysterious candy basket. He flashed his brother a smile, adding in a cajoling tone that they both recognized from years of use, "You're so good at research, the best, really."

With a smirk that showed Sam knew exactly what his brother was up to, he agreed and pulled out the first thick book he came across, a familiar comfort overcoming him now that he was in research mode; it was oddly reassuring to be pouring over ancient texts. He glanced up at Cas, asking, "Any luck with the Mark?"

"None yet." Cas replied, displeasure evident on his face at the lack of progress they were making. He walked along the edge of the bookshelves, hoping that he would sense the one necessary to uncover what they were dealing with. He was unsuccessful, though, and settled on retrieving the second book in the collection Sam was using, trying to hurry the process along.

Sam made a noncommittal noise to the unsurprising news that they were making no progress with the larger issue at hand, but commented no further. He had skimmed through roughly a third of the book in silence before Dean resurfaced wearing a smile that, for the first time in ages, didn't look forced or fabricated.

"You'll never believe what we're dealing with."

"A witch?" Sam guessed, since that had been his first guess all along, "The Candyman?"

"A demon?" Castiel added, only because that was the most likely choice, statistically.

Dean shook his head, the triumphant smile never fading, and after a moment of silence to build the suspense, he announced, "The Easter Bunny."

"Come again?" Sam asked, "I could have sworn you just said the Easter Bunny."

Dean's grin grew larger and he walked to the basket on the table, taking another shot of jelly beans from one of the plastic eggs "A bonafide Easter Bunny. There's been a few stories throughout the years, a handful annually but all accounts turn out to be harmless. The Bunny isn't a threat, just a bunny with a sweet tooth spreading a random act of kindness to others."

"I don't understand."

Dean looked at Cas, who was wearing a perplexed expression identical to Sam's, and further explained, "From what other hunters have said, no one has seen the bunny and it doesn't go door to door like the children's legend portrays it, but every Easter he gives random people a gift basket filled with sweets. Out of the goodness of his heart, I guess, he blesses some lucky sugar-junkie with a fix of the good stuff."

"The Easter Bunny?"

Dean turned his attention back to Sam, nodding firmly, "The Easter Bunny."

"How do we kill it?" Sam asked, the wheels already turning in his mind. If a...bunny...could break into a house, deposit a large basket filled with sweets and sneak back out without being seen, it couldn't be a cute little woodlands bunny, if it even was a bunny in the traditional sense at all. It could be a person dressed as a bunny...or a person _named _Bunny…

"Kill it?" Dean asked incredulously, "It hasn't done anything wrong. It gives out candy and does no harm. Why would you want to kill it?"

"It's unnatural, Dean. Who's to say that it isn't doing something sinister?" Sam fired back, flipping to the index of the book he was reading to see if there was any applicable information now that he knew what they were looking for.

"We're not going to waste the Easter Bunny!"

"If the creature is not inflicting any harm-" Cas began, but was cut off by the two boys bickering louder than his calm tone carried.

"It breaks into people's homes!"

"To give them harmless candy and trinkets! This is a good thing, he's doing a good thing!"

"They could be poisonous-"

"They're not! No one has ever been harmed!"

"Just because you like candy-"

"That's not even what this is about!"

"Of course it is! If you didn't have a basket filled with your weight in chocolate, you'd want to kill this thing too!"

"Dean! Sam!" Cas interrupted loudly, cutting both off in the middle of their argument and pointing to the far corner of the room, "Look!"

The three followed the direction of Castiel's extended finger straight to the floor, where a tiny grey rabbit was sitting in the corner, ears twitching. Dean took a step towards it, hands held out in a non-threatening manner, while Sam pulled out his gun, refusing to take his eyes off of the creature.

"Put that away, you're not going to shoot it." Dean hissed, inching towards the bunny slowly. "Do you think that's him?"

"The Easter Bunny?" Sam questioned, "How could that have carried in all of that candy?"

"Perhaps it's a magical bunny?" Castiel supplied, not realizing the other two had come to that conclusion long before, "It's...smaller...than I would have expected. Fluffier."

Dean reached the rabbit first, crouching down and picking it up. He held it up in front of his face, turning it from side to side and then lifting it up to look underneath, "It doesn't seem very magical."

"It's a rabbit, dude." Sam retorted, pocketing the gun and taking the furry little animal, "I don't think it's _the_ bunny."

"How can you be sure?" Cas questioned, joining the other two as they inspected the animal, "Do you know what this Easter Bunny should look like?"

Dean shrugged, commenting, "The ones in the mall are generally large and creepy."

"That's because they're people dressed in bunny costumes, Dean." Sam retorted with an eye roll, "Did any of your contacts have any descriptions or anything useful to go off of?"

"I told you already that no one's seen it." Dean reminded his brother, a hint of irritation in his voice, "And we're not going to ice it, we're not even going to hunt it. We're going to eat candy until we explode and appreciate the fact that for once, something nice has happened to us."

Sam shook his head, clearly exasperated, but relented and motioned towards the table holding the Easter basket, "Fine, have it your way. Don't come complaining to me when this backfires."

"Who says it's going to backfire?"

"It _always_ backfires. Nothing good ever comes from magically appearing food and seemingly harmless animals. Good things don't happen to us, period." Sam reasoned, "But if you want to believe that the magical bunny brought you candy and everything is great, don't let me stop you."

"Good, I wasn't going to let you stop me." As if to prove his point, Dean walked over to the table, opening two more eggs and pouring the jelly beans into his mouth. Talking around the gooey, sugary mass in his mouth, he added, "See, nothing to worry about."

"What are we going to do with the bunny?" Sam asked, holding out the fuzzball towards his brother, "We can't keep it here."

"I'll take it." Castiel replied, lifting the rabbit out of Sam's hands and slipping it into the pocket of his trenchcoat. "I'll see what I can find out about this Easter Bunny guy, find out if it's as harmless as Dean thinks it is."

"Thanks, Cas." Both boys replied. Castiel left and Dean turned his attention back to the basket, holding out a marshmallow to his brother, "Peep?"

"Gross, no." Sam replied, poking around in the basket until he came across a stick of licorice, "Okay, assuming you're still alive tomorrow after eating possibly contaminated candy, this one's mine."

"Ew, keep it. I wouldn't want that anyway." Dean retorted, pulling out some peanut butter candies and piling them on the table in front of him, "These are mine. Touch them and die."

They dug through the candy for a few minutes as if they were 25 years younger, each laying claim to the pieces they favored and arguing over the ones they both liked. When they reached the bottom, Sam cleared his throat, a triumphant smirk on his face. Dean raised an eyebrow, almost afraid to ask what had his younger brother looking so smug, but eventually gave in and commented, "Okay, spill."

"You were wrong."

"What? I'm never wrong." Dean replied with a laugh, knowing he had been wrong plenty of times but rarely one to admit as such. "What are you talking about?"

"When I was eleven, you told me the Easter Bunny wasn't real."

Dean smirked, looking at his brother with a fond smile, "You were absolutely devastated. I was surprised that you oversized brain hadn't realized it sooner; you were always so logical but you believed in the stupidest things."

"Except I was right." Sam replied with a grin, "I was right, you were wrong. Clearly, the Easter Bunny _does_ exist. _You_ were _wrong_."

"Shut up." Dean retorted, rolling his eyes, "Laugh all you want, I was saving you from getting your ass kicked at school. You were almost 12. You were just a few years out of high school, they would have eaten you alive."

"You'd have kicked their ass."

"Yeah, but it was easier to put up with your dismay that your candy came from me instead of some magical creature than it would have been to kick the ass of the entire school...because, literally, you were the only one who still believed." Dean teased, remembering those days fondly, when their biggest problem paled in comparison to their current issues, "I may have been wrong, but at least I didn't cry like a baby when I learned the truth."

"I didn't cry!" Sam argued. Catching the challenging look in Dean's eye, he amended, "There may have been something in my eye, but I didn't cry."

"Something in your eye...yeah, _tears_." Dean snorted, unwrapping a miniature chocolate bunny. He popped it whole into his mouth and tossed one to Sam, "Try this, it's awesome."

Sam unwrapped it, nibbling on the corner with an appreciative smile. For several minutes, they stood in silence, sorting through the basket until they reached the bottom. Sam had just opened a pack of sour gummy bears when he caught Dean staring at him. He met his brother's gaze, curiosity written plainly on his face. Dean opened his mouth to speak, then shut it, looking away for a few moments as he pretended to search for something in the basket. Looking back in his brother's direction, he finally spoke.

"Happy Easter, Sammy."

"Happy Easter, Dean."


End file.
